Telling Stories: The Sacrificial Asian in Australian Cinema

Abstract

This paper analyses the representation of Asians in four important Australian films produced in the last two and a half decades: Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously, Stephen Wallaces Turtle Beach, Craig Lahiff's Heaven’s Burning and Sue Brooks’ Japanese Story. It argues that the cinematic encounter between Asians and Australians results in the sacrifice of the Asian character and that this is tied to the development of an Australian national identity and the modernity of a national cinema.